


Looking for you and finding myself

by Winxhelina



Series: The complicated, difficult and occasionally very romantic relationship between Dr. Stephen Strange and Dr. Christine Palmer [1]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flashbacks, Memories, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Romance, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 14:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14771552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winxhelina/pseuds/Winxhelina
Summary: When half of the world's population goes missing, Christine Palmer sets out to find out of Stephen Strange is in the half that survived or not.





	Looking for you and finding myself

**Author's Note:**

> Christine Palmer wasn't in the Infinity Wars, which is understandable really, but I thought it would still be nice to theorize on what she as a side character might be doing in the aftermath and how she would react to Stephen's - disappearance. Additionally, because Christine Palmer is The Night Nurse in the comics I thought it would be nice to try and tie that in.

 

Half of the population was gone. Not just of New York. Not just of America. Not just even the Earth if the rumours were to be believed, half the population of the whole universe was gone. Really, Christine wondered how the world still functioned at its barest, but it did seem to somewhat. She had gotten to work in the morning, at least, to the hospital and that’s when it had really hit her just how many people there were now missing. They weren’t even dead, instead they had simply vanished. The beds of the patients with whom she had just spoken to only the day before, were now empty as if there was no one there. The redhead receptionist who was _actually_ named Ariel, Mary, the blond nurse who had a crush on John, the GP who had lost some someone dare to their own heart some time ago, they were both gone. Elizabeth and Alice and countless interns she didn’t even know the names of, but yet remembered, were all gone. Christine’s own little family was spared, so really she should have been lucky, but she didn’t feel lucky at all.

She was sitting in the break room nursing a cup of awful sour-tasting bitter coffee, trying to keep herself from going into shock. She had seen things. Granted, most New Yorkers had by that point seen some pretty weird crap, but she had seen things _up close_. Magical and wonderful and unbelievable things from one of her former colleagues. And that former colleague was currently causing her so much heartache that she felt that she might actually get sick. Not that Stephen causing her heartache was anything new, really, it’d be easier to count the times he hadn’t made her worry about him. She picked up her phone and checked her messages. There were none and she knew that despite all the weirdness and flying sentient cloaks and whatnot, Stephen still did in fact own a phone and he did generally reply to her texts. Apart from the times where he decided it would simply be easier to do a magic portal, step through and reply to her in person. Regardless of whether it was a suitable moment. It generally wasn’t and a few times she had simply thrown the nearest object at him. He was a sorcerer with magic shields and an excellent ability to dodge, so really, it was to drive home a point more than anything. He never quite seemed to learn his lesson and Christine hoped he hadn’t started now.

_Really, how hard it is to do one of those portal things and get here and tell me you’re all right! I’m worried about you!_

She wasn’t sure why she kept texting him at this point. She had sent her eight messages and it was around the fifth she had realized there wasn’t a point to sending them out. There was a cold feeling inside her gut that told her that Stephen was in the fifty per cent that didn’t make it. She supposed they would know soon enough on the news. Even with half of the staff gone there was still some broadcasts made and with Stephen helping out the Avengers, Christine supposed there was a chance he might even make it to the news, but then, part of her had been avoiding the news altogether, because as long as she didn’t know for certain that Stephen was gone, he could still be around.

_That’s it. I’m coming over to yours after my shift and you better be there so beat up and ill or so busy trying to work this catastrophe out that you have forgotten your phone._

She felt she could have gone to the Sanctum a lot sooner, but once again she was worried about what she might find there. She had been to the Sanctum a few times now. It was grand and magical and made her feel out of place, but it was also amazing. Christine liked the library and she had sat there and read some of the books and spent time with Stephen and it had been oddly wonderful. 

The shift was one of the strangest of Christine’s entire life. There was a sense of urgency, panic, so much frantic energy, such a shortage of staff and yet, at the same time, there was no real tangible emergency. Sure, loads of the important staff was missing, but there were also patients missing and in many cases, it was possible to reassign people. There was confusion and chaos everywhere, but even as more and more of it got sorted out, the strange sense of emergency remained. Everyone seemed to feel like something big was coming, like the end of the world was happening, except it already had and now people seemed at a lost as to what to do. Were they supposed to mourn? Grieve? Cry out? They couldn’t simply just sit back and take it?

That sense of urgency didn’t leave Christine even as she left the hospital. So she found herself jogging to the nearest subway station. It was all around her outside too, even more pronounced here as services that weren’t as essential as medical care were still largely offline. In fact, despite the population having been cut by half there was a large number of them in the subway station. Most lines seemed not to be working so she decided it was a better idea to try and find a taxi.

That too, didn’t prove to be very easy, but eventually Christine found herself in one of the yellow cars, watching streets pass by where most establishments were still closed. The driver and her talked a bit, she couldn’t remember most of it later, but the catastrophe was the main topic as usual, the driver had lost two of his daughters, apparently.

“I’m sorry…” she said, feeling a bit distant and yet sympathetic. There was this same compassionate feeling she had been carrying around for a while now with everyone telling her of her losses. It was as if she felt sorry for the entire world and in a way she did. So many people had died, from everyone’s close relatives to important politicians, to well-known and loved stars. No one was safe and everyone was in this tragedy together. There was a beauty in it and Christine could appreciate how catastrophes brought people together, but it was still horrendous and couldn’t be called beautiful on its own.

“What about you then?” the cab driver asked, pulling Christine out of her reverie.

“Huh? Oh, I’m just going to see a friend, well, an ex I suppose, but a good friend and, well, there was something – anyway I’m going to see if he still exists, I’m afraid he doesn’t, but I need to see for myself.”

Christine had no idea how she could explain this to a stranger so calmly when she was feeling like she might get sick any moment now.

“Well, I hope his okay.”

“Yes. It’s right here,” Christine said, pointing out a building: “That one. Put me off here. What do I owe you?”

She barged in with less grace that was suitable for a place like the New York Sanctum. It was quiet here and normally that would have inspired calmness in Christine, but now it only managed to inspire terror.

“Stephen?!” she cried, realizing she sounded a bit like an angry mother who came home from work after getting a call from the school’s headmistress saying their kid got in a fight.

The dust particles danced in the sunlight filled air, unbothered by Christine’s angry shouting. She stormed up the stairs, but it was quiet upstairs too, so she went to Stephen’s room, throwing the door open as if expecting Stephen to lie in the bed sleeping or listening to music so loud he couldn’t hear her. She supposed part of her had hoped for that, because the emptiness of the small otherwise cosy room was startling.

She sat on the bed and thought of Stephen and the time she had slept over in this room after a break in had occurred at her flat. It was a regular human robbing her, but she had thought it be Stephen, just popping in through one of his portals.

“You can’t just come in and pop by whenever you feel like getting something from my fridge!” she had complained, stepping into the kitchen, instead finding a masked man with her stuff in a large bag and a gun in the other.

She had been so startled and scared after that she didn’t want to stay in the flat. 

“I know this isn’t the kind of stuff you normally deal with,” she had told Stephen, flustered: “It’s more in the NYPD jurisdiction and we should leave them something to do and really I’m _fine_.”

“It’s fine,” he had said: “We’re friends and this is fine. I may not take burglary victims here everyday, but you’re my friend and I want you to stay. Please stay.” Stephen’s voice had been kind and soft and warm then and part of Christine had wanted to throw herself into his lap and kiss him.

“You did always have a look at the boring cases for me,” she had joked instead and it had made Stephen look a bit awkward in that way that bringing up him having been a doctor usually did. 

They did end up kissing just a bit, Stephen’s bed was a bit too small for both of them, but neither of then minded and Christine had the excuse of being a bit “shaken” to exchange a few kisses lying there, so close.

She pulled herself out of that pleasant memory and focused on the present: “Where is everyone? Are they all gone?” she asked no one in particular. She got up and noticed there was a photo of her and Stephen on Stephen’s desk and that dug at her heartstrings a little more.  She smiled at it. It was a ridiculous picture. Christine had dressed in one of the black sleek Christian Dior dresses Stephen had gotten her a while ago. She liked the dress, but more importantly, Stephen liked it and she thought it a nice gesture to wear what he had given to her, especially considering Stephen seemed to be wearing the watch she had given him every time they met without fail. She still hadn’t fixed it and that bothered Christine a fair bit, although she never brought it up. Stephen was otherwise wearing his now usual Sorcerer outfit, so they both stood out in the streets of France, but the contrast had been stark. Still, she had nothing to match the ridiculousness of his attire so she might have as well worn the dress she liked and rarely got to wear and that he so obviously appreciated on her. She still remembered catching him looking her Stephen had seemed flustered when caught doing so, uncharacteristically and she had rolled her eyes, not minding. She still didn’t think of him as any kind of monk-like Saint. She didn’t want him to be. A slightly improved version of Stephen who had learned from his mistakes a little was fine.

The trip had been an apology of sorts. They hadn’t explicitly been dating again, but he had taken her out on an amazing night to China, only for them not to see each other for the next two weeks, despite the fact that they had very much promised to keep in touch. They had, in fact done so to an extent, a series of texts the next day and then a few random messages here and there the next week. She hadn’t been mad. Truth to be told she had just been happy to see him. She hadn’t been sure if Stephen had been serious about meeting up again, his life was so vastly different now with magic seemingly encompassing every aspect of it. She wasn’t sure how much he had wanted to do with the life he used to have.

“I’ve just been terribly busy, this – lifestyle requires a lot of dedication. I’m afraid I won’t have very much time in my hands.” He was standing in her bedroom where he had appeared through a portal, pretty much uninvited, but very much welcomed, announcing that he had thought it would be a nice time to take her to France. 

Christine had snorted: “Whereas when a neurosurgeon you were always available, never sought after,” she said sarcastically, pulling on incredibly thin tights slowly, concentrating on not ripping them apart after only just having taken them out of the packet.

“I only took the cases, I wanted. I turned down _so many_ , all the ones that didn’t interest me, that couldn’t pay enough,” he sounded so filled with regret, it made Christine hurt, almost made her sick and she rushed to make him feel better with kind words: “Only one or the other. Occasionally. Sometimes you took some cases because I asked.”

He laughed a bitter laugh: “Only after you insisted, you brought out the best in me, but I was so awful.”

She shrugged, wondering if he was wishing for compliments and not appreciating the self-pity much: “Indeed, horrendous. You saved so many lives.”

“I could have saved many more.”

Christine’s nail got stuck in the thin fabric of the tight, she tried to shake it off, but ended up pulling out a thread. She swore under her breath, giving up on the gentle approach for a moment and pulling the tight up roughly, completely tearing the fabric and pulling it off altogether. Aggravated by this and Stephen’s seemingly endless self-pity, a trait that she had never wished he would cultivate. She could have done with a little less cocky, but she didn’t want full on self-loathing.

“Oh really? Because the way I remember it, you were _slammed_ book with requests. Yes, fine. You took some time to yourself and yes, fine, sometimes I gave you grief about it, and **fine** your method of choosing patients was awful, but you would have had to have made these choices anyway, some choices, and honestly, working the way I work, trying to help everyone who comes through the door, it’s – I feel I the need to do it, but in truth I’m pretty sure it’s not entirely healthy. Besides, saying I brought out the best in you pretty much implies the good was there all along, waiting to be fished out” she said, stomping to find another pair of tights. Would red stockings be considered too sexy?

“You sound – pissed. Is this a bad time? Should I come back some other time?"

“No! Can’t you see I’m already half-dressed?!”

That was met by such poignant silence that Christine sighed and spoke again: “Listen, I admit that you were more than a little cocky back then, but you still did some excellent work and this self-loathing is a bit much.”

He sounded defeated in his reply: “What can I do? I’ve changed.”

“So utterly? Isn’t there a happy medium between “I’m the best in the world” and “I am awful and deserve to spend an eternity dying in gruesome ways?” He had told her about that. He had let his guard down and by the time he was finished with the story and realized she looked mortified by his admission that he thought he had earned it, was too late. She had had disturbingly creative nightmares about Stephen in many different ways for about a week afterwards.

“I’ll try and find some, but there has been some drastic change.”

Christine paused her work of pulling up the red stocking to assess his expression and smiled: “Not so much. You’re still staring at my arse in this dress as soon as I bend down.”

He blushed and looked away, but only for a moment: “Some things can’t be helped.”

She smiled and finished dressing, quickly making her way to him: “I’m ready to go.”

“Yes. Then we will. You look lovely, but really, Christine you have to understand that I – I can’t do this often. I’m afraid I might not find the time, although I’ll surely try.”

“Right. Whereas I as a medical professional just have all the time in the world to spend and am pretty much constantly free.”

He seemed to think she was seriously offended, which she wasn’t: “I’m not saying that. It’s just – wasn’t that what broke us apart last time? Me not spending enough time with you?”

“No. It was you being too self-centered and you make it sound like we’re dating again.”

He only seemed to notice that now himself: “Ah. No… I wasn’t implying that.”

She smiled and kissed him gently on the lips, running her hands across his ridiculously clothed chest. Apparently there was enough heat in her eyes to prompt him to ask: “ _Are_ we dating again?”

She just kissed him again, deeper. It wasn’t a real answer, because she didn’t know the real answer. Did she want to date him again?

She had never given him any answer to that, but the answer seemed clearer now that there was a very real possibility that Stephen was dead. She took the photo with her. If Stephen was here she was going to tease him about his sentimentality. If Stephen wasn’t here she was going to take that photo home with her and torture herself by looking at it every night before bed and remembering all the lovely times she had had with her Sorcerer Supreme.

“You better not have sacrificed yourself for the greater good again,” she muttered and went to search the rest of the Sanctum for survivors.

Wong was in the library. He explained that Stephen was gone far too calmly for Christine’s liking. He didn’t sound cold and Christine had expected Stephen might be gone, but she didn’t like how he was so accepting of this situation.

“So now what?” she asked, a little snappily. 

“Now it’s my duty to look after the Sanctum.”

Christine did her best now to show how angry that answer made her. Sure, she understood, in theory, that Wong was simply looking at the bigger picture, that this was more important to him than any number of single people. But still who could care about relics and artifacts when real people were gone? When Stephen was gone.

She threw herself into one of the library chairs with a loud noise that seemed to annoy Wong, but frankly she could not care less about it. 

It was Stephen’s favourite workplace here in the library or at least one where she had sat with him on several occasions and she had a feeling some of the books were still here from Stephen’s research. Here they had sat many hours together, occasionally ending up bothering Wong when they spent more time whispering to each other, teasing and giggling like children, than reading. 

She ran her fingers across the pages reverently, thinking he might have touched those very pages mere days ago. It was all too advanced for her of course. Once she had gotten over the initial shock she had taken an interest in magic and Stephen was only too happy to explain things to her, but she could only understand words and fragments of the page in front of her. She looked over to Wong in the other side of the large room, wondering if he could explain things to her, but thought it best not to bother him. He seemed busy and she doubted he would appreciate it.  

She thought back to the feeling that had surrounded her all day. That feeling of helplessness that had surrounded her, doing the best she could do to help and yet feeling like there was nothing real she could do. The world had changed so much, perhaps it was time to set her medical knowledge aside for now and join Stephen’s weirder way of helping people? Would it be more effective?

But no, she could never be a Sorceress Supreme. An Avenger. She didn’t think. But what if there was still something she could do to help the cause? She had plenty of inside knowledge about magic and even some of the superhero stuff now, there must have been some way that could work in her advantage. She had helped so many people these past days, but none of them had been in any way magical or with special abilities. At least she didn’t think they had been, but really, had they been would have they had said anything? Would they have felt safe to do so? Would they have expected the medical staff in the hospital not to freak out and better, to know what to do with that information? She remembered her initial reaction to Stephen’s powers very well and if all her co-workers would react similarly or worse to supernatural powers then it was safe to assume that those who had them would try to keep them a secret even when seeking medical advice. And when patients kept such important details about themselves from their doctors they could hardly be expected to be given adequate and helpful treatment. Thus, it seemed that the city of New York at least was in dire need of someone competent to patch up and help all these superhuman beings. Maybe she could help them there? Start a very specific and specialised practice? Christine smiled to herself, hell, maybe she would even get herself a cool and catchy nickname to go by.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thank you for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments. Please.
> 
> Also - did any of you noticed an Easter Egg from another series I slipped in there?


End file.
